The silence of the faujis

The silence of the faujis



Pakistan's slow-motion slide into sectarian hell has, so far, met with
studied silence from all the major political players.
In the case of the PPP, the silence is mere cowardice. In the case of
the PML-N and the PTI, the silence is calculated; a cold-blooded
conclusion that there are seats to be gained from turning a blind eye.
What is more interesting though is the silence of the khakis. Because
of all institutions, it is the Army that has the most to lose.
The fact of the matter is that the armed forces are a pluralistic
institution. Our officer corps includes not just Muslims of every
shade but also Christians, Parsis and even Ahmadis. More importantly,
while Shias form 25 per cent of Pakistan's population, there is some
evidence that they form an even larger part of the officer cadre. The
Army may, therefore, be able to survive the day when Muslims refuse to
obey Christians. But it will not survive the day when Sunnis refuse to
obey Shias. Assuming that the Army knows this, the question arises as
to why it is doing nothing. My understanding is that there are two
reasons — one official, one unofficial.
The official reason is that it is not the Army's job to determine the
ideological contours of this country. Instead, that is the job of the
civilian leadership.
Pardon the language but I am going to call 'bullshit' on that one.
This country has been ruled for decades at a time by the military.
Even otherwise, the military has generally been the single-most
important political force in Pakistan. More importantly, while the
roots of discrimination in our Constitution were introduced by
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the reason why those seedlings of hate took hold
and spread is because of General Ziaul Haq and his minions. If the
Army is now troubled by sectarianism in Pakistan, it cannot wash its
hands of the matter.
What, then, is the real argument?
The real argument is that the rank and file of the Army have been
deliberately indoctrinated with the belief that they are warriors of
Allah whose job is to keep infidels at bay. In other words, the
average soldier's patriotism has a distinctly religious tinge in which
Pakistan is a fortress of Islam and its enemies are also enemies of
Islam.
Now this worldview is certainly useful in motivating people to kill
Indians. At the same time, it has limited utility when it comes to
jihadis because the jihadis claim to be even better Muslims than us.
Till date, the Army has tried to deal with this problem not by
changing its propaganda but by painting jihadis as Indian stooges. It
has done so because it believes the present moment is simply too
delicate for wholesale ideological retooling. In other words, the Army
thinks that telling the jawans to protect a pluralistic ideal could
well result in mass mutiny. At a practical level, this is undoubtedly
a very powerful argument. There is also ample historical precedent for
not worrying about subtleties in the middle of a war.
To take one famous example, the Bolsheviks spent 1917-1942 preaching
to the world that nationalism was a bourgeois disease. However, when
the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, Marxist orthodoxy was swiftly
jettisoned in favour of a full-throated nationalism and the cult of
'Mother Russia'. This was because the average Soviet soldier was far
more willing to die for his country than for the sake of class
solidarity.
But does this strategy make any sense in the case of Pakistan's
current situation? Not in my view.
The whole point of a military ideology is to objectify the enemy,
i.e., to reduce the opponent to an evil caricature who can be killed
without compunction. Accordingly, the most important function of a
military ideology is to allow differentiation between 'us' and 'them'
so that the others can then be caricatured and killed.
In the case of the Germans, hyper-nationalism made sense because it
allowed Joseph Stalin to portray the invaders as evil Huns. Similarly,
jihadi nationalism makes some sense as a military ideology if the
enemy is India because Indian troops can all be lumped into the
category of 'kafirs'. However, in the case of the TTP, jihadi
nationalism is useless because it fails to adequately differentiate
the enemy from ourselves.
Our current national ideology is a muddled mess in which we have
decided both, that all citizens shall have the right of freedom of
religion and that the state will decide their religion for them. This
really doesn't work.
Let me be more blunt. By stating in our Constitution that certain
people (i.e. Ahmadis) do not have the right to consider themselves
Muslims, we have accepted the argument that an individual's religious
identity is a political matter. It is not possible to reconcile that
argument with what the rest of the world considers to be freedom of
religion. Moreover, this conflict is not just theoretical: we have
thoroughly legalised persecution of Ahmadis and yawned in the face of
their suffering.
The net result is that there is only a difference of degree, and not a
difference of principle, between the state of Pakistan and the emirate
envisioned by the TTP. The state excommunicates Ahmadis. The TTP
excommunicates both Ahmadis and Shias.
Pakistan, therefore, has two options. The rational option is to move
in a more pluralistic direction where the state doesn't have the right
to define anyone as a non-Muslim. The politically feasible option is
to continue with the status quo but to try and differentiate our
particular brand of witch-hunting from the tactics of the TTP. I
understand that the rational option is politically dangerous.
Unfortunately, the politically feasible option doesn't work for Shias
like me. That's because we're likely to wind up dead under that
option. Furthermore, while preserving the status quo may work in the
short term, the long-term result of such cowardice is likely to be
civil war.
Rationally speaking, the Army no longer has the option of staying
silent. Yes, it is not the Army's job to fix our muddled and hateful
beliefs. But if the Army doesn't at least prod the civilians into
acting, this country will fall apart. When that happens, there will be
no Pakistan. And no Pakistan Army either.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 29th, 2012.
By Feisal H Naqvi






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*Shahzad Shameem*

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